Poll: Cuomo maintains commanding lead against little-known Astorino

Gov. Andrew Cuomo held a 37 percentage-point lead among likely voters against Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino, who remains largely unknown to New Yorkers, a poll today found.

The Democratic governor seeking a second term led Astorino, the Westchester County executive, 60 percent to 23 percent, the Siena College poll found. There's 15 weeks until Election Day, Nov. 4, and Astorino was unknown by 61 percent of voters.

Cuomo's led among likely voters by 76 percentage points in New York City, 29 percentage point in the New York City suburbs and 15 percentage points upstate. To pull off the upset, Astorino would have to beat Cuomo in upstate and the suburbs and stay competitive in New York City.

Last week, Cuomo reported $35 million in his campaign coffers. Astorino had $2.4 million.

The Siena poll found that about two-thirds of voters said New York is about the same or worse off than it was four years ago, when Cuomo first won election. But 59 percent of voters said Cuomo has made New York a better place to live, and only 15 percent said he's made it worse.
Cuomo's favorability rating was 61 percent, little changed from other recent Siena polls.
The poll didn't do a head-to-head matchup against Cuomo's potential Democratic primary foe Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham Law professor who submitted petitions to force a primary Sept. 9. The poll, though, showed she had little name recognition around the state.
In the other statewide races on the November ballot, Democratic incumbents Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman held sizable leads over their Republican challengers.

The poll asked voters about statewide issues.

By a 49 percent to 39 percent margin, voters wanted to see the controversial Common Core testing standards stopped.

Voters remained divided over whether to allow hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in New York: 43 percent of likely voters opposed it, and 40 percent supported it -- nearly unchanged since April.

The poll was conducted July 13-16 to 774 likely New York registered voters; previous polls had included just registered voters. It had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

Albany bureau chief:
Joseph Spector is Gannett's Albany Bureau chief and has covered New York politics and government since 2002. He was the political reporter for the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester and in 2007 joined Gannett’s Albany Bureau, covering state government for seven news organizations&nbsp;and USA Today.